Search taxonomy is becoming very important in search engine optimization. Using a recent study, Bill goes into detail on the types of searches that are done and how to implement them in your content. Knowing how users find your business and what they are looking for can help with ad and SEO campaigns. Marketing is a key factor for any online business. If you are starting out or need to revamp your website check out our new Solopreneur Package. – WST

By: Bill Slawski

There are creative ways that a small business may use to help visitors find them online, engage those visitors and customers, and keep them coming back. The Small Business Administration has a article that describes some ways that many businesses can use to promote their business in 15 Foolproof Ideas for Promoting Your Company. The article offers ideas like holding contests, or publishing a newsletter, offering demonstrations and seminars and more. Many of those ideas can work well in an online setting.

When you create content for an ecommerce site, it also can help to think about more than just how you may present the products or goods that you offer on your pages. Many ecommerce sites on the web simply break products own into categories, and provide very little beyond a listing of those products and brief descriptions about them.

Understanding how people may search for what you have to offer can be really important, especially if you hope to have visitors find you through search engines. It can be a key to finding creative ways to bring people to your site who might be interested in what you have to offer.

Different Intents Behind Searches

It can be helpful to understand that when people search, they often have different purposes in mind. When someone from one of the major search engines writes about these different purposes, they often refer to them as “user intent.”

Some people may want to learn about a topic, or to buy something, or to learn how to do something for free. Since many visitors may arrive at a web site through a search engine, it helps to know about different types of queries that a searcher may use to find your site. So, an important way of thinking about queries is to consider the intent behind them.

A convenient way of breaking down queries into different types is described in a paper written by search engineer Andrei Broder, who classifies the intent behind queries down into navigational, transactional, and informational, in the paper A taxonomy of web search (pdf)

Informational Queries – The web is much more than just a commercial space, filled with marketing and commerce. It’s a medium where people can communicate with each other, share ideas, learn about a world of topics, find and offer advice, and explore other countries and cultures and communities. Many people who do go online with some kind of commercial intent do so to save money rather than spend it, often looking for ways to do things themselves. People who may want to buy something may be looking for information that can help them make an informed decision before they decide to make a purchase.
Navigational Queries – A navigational query is one in which a searcher is attempting to find a specific page or site that they have visited before, or have assumed likely exists on the Web. For example, if I want to visit the pages of the American Psychological Association, I might type [apa] into a search box, hoping that the top search result might be the home page for the organization. The major commercial search engines have even been trying to help people who perform navigation type queries by attempting to associate certain query terms with sites that may be ideal destinations for those queries. The search engines may even offer additional links under a listing for those sites, referred to as site links or quicklinks, which may help lead searchers to pages within a site that they may be interested in ending up at on those sites.

Transactional Queries – Transactional queries are ones in which a searcher may not have a specific site in mind, but they want to perform or complete some kind of task online, such as accessing and searching a database about a topic, being entertained interactively, downloading a video, making a purchase, or interacting with the site or others in some way. If you offer goods or services to consumers or to other businesses, you’ll want to be found by the people who are looking for what you have to offer and want to interact with you.

How can you use your Squidoo lens to build more traffic to your website? Let’s start with introducing you to Squidoo and what it is. Simply put, Squidoo is just a free online host site where you can make your own web pages or lens without needing any knowledge or background in programming. Squidoo lens are pretty simple to set up and can be done in less than 10 minutes making this an invaluable source for getting people to notice or read just what you have to say!

There are many add-ins that are also available such as RSS feeds which makes it a great traffic and ranking booster for your website. Forget about the need for advertising through print media that will cost you potentially hundreds of dollars to get the word out about your website and the product or service that you want to sell! Squidoo lens can also include links to your website, therefore rapidly increasing your website traffic with the proper keyword placement.

You may create many different Squidoo pages that pertain to what you want to sell online. Let’s say that you have a website that sells candles for instance and you are looking for ways to promote it and gain more organic traffic without the cost of submitting to article directory. You can do this quite simply by making a Squidoo lens for each and every one of the candles that you have to sell. All you have to do is create a page or lens in regards to the type and/or scent of the candle. You can also perhaps do a lens on aromatherapy or the benefits of relaxation!

Each Squidoo page is automatically indexed by search engines so the more you write about your website using strategically placed keywords, the more your ranking goes up!
There are many things that can be added to your Squidoo lens such as; surveys, youtube videos, photos, blog searches and a whole lot more. Another way to gain real organic traffic is to perhaps place some of the newer released youtube videos there! Once they are searched for with Google, your Squidoo page will show up and you have gained some traffic!

Your Squidoo lens is amongst hundreds of thousands of other Squidoo lens so you gain more traffic this way as well. It is quite common knowledge that once the topic has been searched and several of the same are on the one page most of us simply click the next link to view and find knowledge about the same thing. Surveys about new products that you are about to launch are a great way to generate traffic and potential sales of the item through your Squidoo lens. Interaction is also prominent with Squidoo lens for every time something is added whether it is a comment or a reaction to one, your page is sent to all of those who have added the RSS feature to their Squidoo. There are many ways to increase traffic to your website by creating a Squidoo lens, so what are you waiting for?

Gain free advertising, traffic, page ranking, potential customers and sales simply by making a Squidoo lens today! Or you can hire a professional squidoo lens creation service to execute an awesome and more effective job for you.

TeamWork Builds Web SuccessThe Web Success Team specializes in building and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online tools and proven techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site through the expanding “social web” and how to convert visitors into buyers at a high rate of return.

You must promote online and offline to succeed.

A big mistake many online-based businesses make is ignoring the “real world”. There is a lot of potential in both local and national advertising for many businesses. Press releases can lead to articles in print and broadcast media. If you have a unique service, product or event don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Get the word out, promote your online business offline with incentives yo drive in fresh traffic to your website.

These tips are meant to be used as a guideline to improve traffic to your site, Increase your conversion rates, help turn visitors into buyers, and keep you ahead of the competition. Turning to a web marketer can ultimately save you time and money and increase your success online. The Web Success Team has many proven marketing strategies and techniques that can be viewed at http://www.websuccessteam.com. The Team would be happy to discuss your web marketing needs with a complimentary consultation and web marketing assessment of your current site.

Walk into a shopping mall and at the ends or in the corners are usually huge big-name stores. These are anchor units, the flagships of the mall. For many people they are a destination on their own, or a big part of the decision process in choosing where to go. The smaller units fill in the gaps, gaining walk-by traffic as people move from one ancho